New moon springs load up The Race as bonito push past Block Island toward the Gut

Last week was a transition week and the water knew it. We came off the June full moon into a settling neap cycle, and the current through the Race and Plum Gut went soft for a few days — the kind of slack that makes wire line guys grind their teeth because the fish stack up but won't commit until the flow picks back up. Now that's changing fast. We're four days out from the new moon on the 11th, and the springs are already building. Every tide I've run this week at Valiant Rock has been stronger than the one before it, and by the weekend we're talking full spring current through the Race, Plum Gut, and the Sluiceway — the kind of water that turns Race Rock into a washing machine and forces bait against every ledge from Valiant Rock to Little Gull.

That matters for two reasons. First, the current lanes tighten up the slack windows — I've been finding true slack at Valiant Rock running about twelve to fifteen minutes off the printed Race Rock table this week, and with springs building that gap only grows. If you're timing a drift there, don't trust the app, trust the rip line — watch for the boil to go flat before you commit the anchor or the drift. Second, there's real oceanography backing this up: the cold wall that usually pins bonito and albies down around Block Island has collapsed — Rhode Island Sound came up better than ten degrees on that boundary — which means the warm corridor isn't stopping at BI anymore. It's spreading toward Newport and Point Judith, and that warm water is leaking into our approaches through the Sluiceway. I'm not saying the albies are stacked in the Gut yet — they're not, not fully — but the setup for it just got a lot more favorable than it's been in years past this early in July.

On the bass: this has been a solid week, not a lights-out week, and I want to be straight about that. Wire line trolling tube-and-worm and bucktail-tipped umbrella rigs through Race Rock and along the Valiant Rock ledge has been producing fish in the 28- to 38-inch range, mostly on the last hour of the ebb into slack, working 40 to 60 feet with the wire out 250 to 300 feet depending on speed. The bigger fish — we've had a few pushing 20 pounds — are coming off bucktails worked slow and heavy right on the bottom of the rip face at Plum Gut, 3- to 4-ounce heads in white or chartreuse with a curly-tail trailer, dropped down during the last twenty minutes of slack before the tide turns. That window is short. You get maybe fifteen, twenty minutes where the current lays down enough to hold bottom without getting swept into the lighthouse rocks, and that's when the biggest bass in that rip decide to feed instead of just holding.

Bluefish have been the reliable meat-and-potatoes fish all week — chunked bunker and cut mackerel drifted through the Sluiceway on wire or 60-pound fluorocarbon leader is putting choppers in the 8- to 12-pound class in the boat steadily, no real technique required beyond being in the right seam on the outgoing.

Fluke has moved, and this is worth knowing if you've been fishing the bay side out of habit. Long Island Sound's bay water pushed close to 79 degrees and shoved the fluke out toward the channels and inlets, and the ocean-side upwelling — that cooler 71-degree water riding in on the current — is exactly where they've relocated. I'd fish the outgoing tide on the ocean side of Plum Gut and along the deeper edges toward Great Gull Island, bucktails tipped with Gulp Swimming Mullet in white or pink, 20 to 35 feet, working it slow along the bottom contour where the sand meets structure. That cooler water is holding bait, and the fluke followed it.

Black sea bass have been steady but not spectacular around the rock piles at Race Rock and the deeper structure off Valiant Rock — squid strips and Gulp on a two-hook bottom rig, 50 to 70 feet, best on the last of the incoming when the current eases enough to keep bait on bottom instead of getting swept sideways.

On the albies and bonito — I want to manage expectations here. The signals are strong: the warm corridor is widening, the pelagic window that opened around the Fourth is in its closing days but still live, and the first Long Island reports of bonito and Spanish mackerel are trickling in from Moriches and Shinnecock on clean incoming water. That's the leading edge of what should push toward our approaches. If the pattern holds and that warm plume keeps sliding east past Block Island into Rhode Island Sound, I expect the first real albie and bonito showings in the Sluiceway and off Great Gull within the next week to ten days — epoxy jigs in 1/2- to 3/4-ounce, worked fast on the pop, will be the ticket once they stack. It's not there yet. Anyone telling you they're blitzing in the Gut right now is getting ahead of the water.

Look-ahead: with the new moon on the 11th building spring tides through the 13th, expect faster water and shorter slack windows everywhere from Race Rock to Plum Gut — plan your drifts tighter and be ready to move the moment the rip goes flat. If I had one trip this week, I'd fish the last twenty minutes of the evening ebb at Valiant Rock on wire, then slide over to Plum Gut on the turn and throw bucktails through the last of the slack before the flood builds. That's where the biggest bass in this system have been feeding, and bigger tides this weekend should only sharpen that bite — assuming the wind stays out of the northeast and doesn't blow the rip lines apart.